Sadness and grief have been addressed by teachers, psychologists, philosophers, and religious figures for centuries. Sadness appears to be a long-term experience of humanity.
Loss, despair, change, death…these often bring tears. Many thoughts appear in the mind, sometimes almost simultaneously with this emotion or feeling called sadness.
Expressing sadness can feel strangely out of control. Often, when we really “cry our eyes out” we just let the wave take us from beginning to end. And then, it’s over.
Deep sadness that keeps appearing or returning can become more difficult to navigate. How do we humans work with sadness that remains…with terrible loss or grief, perhaps life-changing loss that follows the death of a loved one, or some other permanent change.
“I’ve developed a new philosophy – I only dread one day at a time.”~Charles Schultz
When I look back on my experience of sadness in my life in childhood and then later as I grew up, I see that I had some really interesting thoughts appear very quickly (that I never questioned) when it came to sadness.
These beliefs about sadness kept my feeling stuck, unresolved, unexpressed somehow:
- my sadness will bother other people
- I need to keep this to myself
- if others know I am sad, they won’t be honest with me
- no one knows how to help people who are sad anyway
- there’s no solution to this loss (the person is gone, the event has passed)
- I’ll feel this way forever
- being too emotional or sad is a sign of weakness
- if only this hadn’t happened I wouldn’t feel sad in the first place.
- I hate this feeling
These kinds of thoughts are heavy, weighty, and very difficult for allowing this thing called “sadness” to run through us, without trying to manipulate ourselves or hide it or change it ASAP.
So here it is. Tears, grief, sobbing, body rocking, the voice making sound. Perhaps your sadness is only quiet tears falling from your eyes, and maybe not even that.
Instead of judging this experience….I let it be here. I let it take the time it takes. I notice that there is an end. I remember that there is a saying “have a good cry”. Like it’s actually a good thing, like it releases something.
“I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been – if you’ve been up all night and cried ’til you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness.” ~C.S. Lewis in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
I was listening once to Adyashanti, one of my favorite spiritual teachers, talk about holding a funeral for his dog. He found himself weeping, sobbing openly while everyone gathered around. And right in the middle of that great grief, he noticed a great warmth in the center of his heart, like a light beaming there.
Without any judgment or hope that I will soon NOT be sad anymore…if I watch this sadness thing and notice what is happening…I may find that grief and joy are present together.
I entered my house last night after taking my darling son to college and leaving him there. THAT was when sadness hit me, and I cried. I was having thoughts like “he will never live with me again” (and, chuckle, I do not know that this is true). Something about entering the quiet cottage knowing this, with the thought right there.
The thought enters “I miss him” and I immediately question it. Not 100% true. Images rapidly firing through my mind’s eye of him being born, standing up in the park for the first time, age 8, age 12, now. Do I miss any of that? No, he is right here, in my mind. I can picture him perfectly. I know what he might say, how his face looks.
This is not denying sadness, making it something different than it is. It is just noticing that I cry and cry for this goodbye moment, acknowledging somehow this change….and that this moment is also hello. I begin to find advantages for his departure.
“Is it sadness that you are feeling or love? Isn’t it love, feel it as deeply as you can, let it live in you, allow it, let it cry you, take you over even, its okay, love is all powerful. Don’t confuse feelings that you believe to be sadness with what love feels like, my dearest.”~Byron Katie
Love, Grace